On Tuesday, the country missed the opportunity to vote for real change – actual, real and tangible transformations to our country. Change will come when we stop passing and renewing laws such as the Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which egregiously violate the very basic principles this country was founded upon. It will come when we stop calling the dead children from the drone strikes in Pakistan “collateral damage” and actually put a face to these people who are no different from the rest of us.
Maybe if we chose a president who actually wanted to end the War on Drugs and the prison industrial complex, America will not have the highest incarceration rates in the world. Perhaps if a candidate actually took a stand for marriage equality, instead of changing his position one year before the elections, the new fight for civil rights would have been won already. Instead of bailing out corporations, maybe the American people need to be bailed out for being tricked into fraudulent contracts and those who caused the recession arrested and tried in a court of law.
America is at a crossroads and it was up to the public to decide whether we continue on the two-party road to serfdom. Unfortunately, it seems that’s the path we’re headed down.
Bo Tao is a senior Public Health major from Baltimore, Md. He is a staff writer for The News-Letter.
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